UMECUnited Mining Exploration Commission: A group of friends playing JumpGate-- "a MMORPG that launched smoothly, breaks from fantasy character setting, emphasizes PvP, and is the first persistent world space simulator that nobody talks about." ~Scorch

Lets take a 425 railgun with uranium as an example:
Tracking is 0.03rad/sec, optimal is 40km, falloff is 25km

Lets say you always hit
Target is 0-40km away, damage is at its maximum
40-65 gradually less damage
65+ you dont do any damage, the ammo just doesnt go farther

The trouble is, that becuase of the tracking and enemies speed, your guns might not hit anything bellow 50km and hit everytime at 60km. In that case, regardless of the optimal range, your best combat distance would be 60 km instead of 40km.

You will be doing less damage than at 40km, but at least you hit the tatget. The number one priority is to hit the target, needless to say, if you dont hit, the damage you WOULD have done is irrevelevant.

The quality of the “hit” is also affected by tracking so you might even do more quality shots, and more damage at 60km that at the “optimal” at 40km.

The reason people feel that projectile guns were “nerfed” when the devs increased the inportance of tracking in a patch a whila ago, is that projectiles guns are meant for long range and have low tracking. Tracking gets easyer the farther the target is away.

Tip
MicroWarpDrive inceases your signature radius 500times, making a mwd ship easyer to hit. This is a penalty the Devs put on mwd on purpose. While orbiting, the speed gained using mwd makes you harder to hit, but the increase in signature radius makes you easyer to hit so it evens out. Using a 10NM afterburner on a frig might therefore be better.

*Tracking mods increase your tracking by a % of what the guns currently have. Increasing a gun with low tracking still gives low tracking. So no matter how many tracking mods you use, a large gun might never have good enough tracking to kill a small ship.

*DoT: Damage ower time. Its not only the damage potential of your gun thats important. Hitting and the rate of fire are also very important. A small gun, with high tracking speed, high rate of fire but low damage per shot, might do more damage over time than a larger weapon. Might even be easyer on the cpu/grid/cap to. If you have to use a grid or a cpu enhancer in a low slot, you might try to fit a smaller guns and use the low slots for damage mods. In many instances this gives a much better damage over time.

Switching from 425mm to named 350mm on my Megathron made it useful again

Jonas Bane wrote:

Also keep in mind that your turret's Signature Resolution compared to your targets Signature Radius is an important factor. Large class guns have a hard time hitting smaller craft. Unless they're flying right at you or directly away, you'll have a hard time hitting frigates with cruiser and battleship sized guns.

You should be able to right click the weapon on the fitting screen to get the optimal and falloff with the current ammo loaded and your skills taken into account.

Weapon bonuses are, for the most part, only on your optimal range. Using your example, loading lead into your howitzer would give your an optimal of 12k, falloff remains at 4k, and your maximum range to do damage is 16k. Trajectory Analysis is the only skill that increases your falloff range.

The basics of gunnery go like this. Assuming both you and your target are stationary so tracking isn't a factor, you will always hit your target if they're within your optimal range. As you move into falloff, your chances to hit go down until you're at 50% at optimal + falloff. Beyond that, you've got a rare chance to score a hit. There is some randomness involved, so you can sometimes miss a target within your optimal and land a wrecking shot outside your maximum range.

Tracking is where things get messy. All weapons have a tracking speed and a signature resolution. Imagining your ship and your target are just points in space, if the change in angle between the two of you is faster than your gun's tracking speed, you have a lower chance to hit. Your tracking speed is also modified by the difference between your target's signature radius and your gun's signature resolution. If you are using a cruiser gun with a resolution of 120 against a frigate with a resolution of 40, your tracking speed is reduced to 30% (40/120 = 0.3). This makes hitting smaller, fast moving objects harder with bigger guns.

This is where projectiles get in trouble. At your optimal range, your target is moving fast enough that your guns simply can't track them. You end up missing more often than if you pull back and engage at a distance farther than your optimal. You can also orbit at a slower speed, or fly directly towards and away from your target, to minimize your own movement's effect on your tracking speed.

Quick Exit
just hit f11 to get the mini map up and set destination to any system, and then hit 'autopilot', if u need a quick exit. 'Assets' will lag the hell outta the game for 5-10 secs, easily enuf time for ya ship to go puff ... 'P+P' can lag u a bit too, specially if youve got loads of bms + buddies

Last edited by Heretic on Sat Mar 05, 2005 10:32 pm; edited 1 time in total

Track down some 4/10 complexes. Downside is that you have to compete with other players, as the bad guys only respawn after a certain amount of time. But two Thoraxes will have plenty of things to shoot, and the final Overseer Battleship will give you a good challenge.

Depending on your skills, Level 3 missions can be a good challenge with two players. Best way I've found doing this is to have both players accept a mission, then tackle them back to back as a group. You should be able to finish both within the time bonus.

Last edited by Heretic on Sat Mar 05, 2005 10:31 pm; edited 1 time in total

I used to use my punisher a lot to hunt sansha npc's in 0.1 systems - it's a great way to get named lasers etc that you can make use of. You can certainly get to the stage where you are comfortable in any empire system using only the punisher.

Personally an approach that (have to modify this slightly due to the recent missile/propulsion changes) uses a decent 1mn ab and armour tanks in the low slots (named small repairer, 1 x thermal 50% hardener) can close quickly enough and tank for long enough to get "under" any of the cruisers guns. Once you are at short range you can safely orbit at whatever optimal range your multispectral crystals give you and wear them down with little or no fear of being hit by the cruisers. Target the frigates first as they will still be able to hit you even when you are in a tight orbit.

NB: This approach is very much tailored to fighting Sanshas as they only do thermal and em damage and they have very few missile boats. Obviously I have only listed the key modules above but you can fill in the blanks depending on your skills and preferences, though I'd recommend dual light pulse lasers and cap chargers/relays to keep the repairer running. Also if you find that you aren't tanking the damage you take you can always employ a supplemental em resistance measure in one of the lows too - perhaps a passive measure depending on what you can fit. You may even have the luxury of fitting a heat sink to up your damage

Tracking is measured in radians per second. Do you know what a radian is? It is a measure of the arc of a circle.

Lets say hypothetically, that the tracking will allow you to hit something that is moving a relative 5 degrees (I use degrees and not radians because I think it is clearer) per second around your ship. If your target is 100m away from you, then that ship is moving faster then 5 degrees per second relative to you if it has a transverse above 8.75m/s. If that ship is 10k away from you, then it is moving faster then 5 degrees per second relative to you if it has a transverse above 875m/s. If a ship at 10k is moving 8.75m/s, then it is only moving .05 degrees relative to your ship. See how something that is closer is much harder to hit, since your weapon tracking is based on the arc of a circle?

See the point? That is why hitting ships that are closer to you is harder. It is completely independant of optimal range. Tracking is measured by an angle of a circle that the gun can track. It does not matter what the radius (optimal) of the circle is.

F'Nog wrote:

To put it super simply, there are [Pi] rads in a circle. So the closer to 3.14159 you can get, the better.

If you have the right ammo, for the right gun or launcher, when docked inside a station, simply call up the Fitting UI and drag and release the ammo, into the fitted gun or launcher.

When in space, one can set the gun/launcher to 'autoreload' causing the gun/launcher to reload once depleted of ammo. You can also do this by selecting the gun/launcher in the UI (inspace) and selected another type of ammo.
You will need to have ammo inside you cargo haul.

For laserturrets, one can fit other frequency cristals to increase damage output, range etc.

Doing this in space can come in handy, if you happen to have long range ammo and a rat or PC comes in close, you can simply reload close range ammo (be it crystals, missiles or ammo for guns). To see what range an ammo type has, rightclick it and select 'info' then view it properties (flight time, speed or range modifier). When ammo is fitted to a gun, the gun info will display the falloff range and optimal range. Using optimal range gives you best chance hitting a target with most damage at a few km's above optimal. Try this out to get the feeling.

Do mind that defender missiles is not an offensive weapon. They only target (automatic) other missiles.

On every ammo type in the game, there is a number for base shield damage, and a number for base armour damage per round. There are also numbers for how much of a specific damage type each round does. The two are clearly related, but i can't for the life of me fathom the maths of it. Anyone got any clues?

It was realy confusing to me a for few months actually.

Ok, the real numbers you want to pay attention to are the damage type specific ones. Those show you what kinds of damage / how much the ammo will do after you multiply it by the damage modifier of the gun turret (that number will be listed on the gun's info page near the top). That gives you a general idea on how different ammo and gun combinations will perform. Now, the actual damage delt to your target depends on whats going on when in battle (i.e. speed, tracking, target signature..) so expect to see very different results in the field.

The main point of all this is:
(ammo type damage) * (weapon damage mod) = (normalized damage)

[EDIT: Missile Launchers don't have a weapon damage mod]

The "Base Armor Damage" and "Base Shield Damage" that you see are wierd ones. They are actually the amount of damage YOU would take if hit by normalized damage with a weapon mod of 1x, also taking into account your current shield and armor resistances.

Oh, and don't forget your gun turrets' rate-of-fire will really affect the amount of damage you can put on your target over time.

Optimal range is exactly what it says, the best range to hit a target. Accuracy Falloff is the range at which your chances of hitting drop. At Optimal + Falloff you have a 50% chance of hitting even a non-moving target which you aren't moving. At Optimal + 2x Falloff you have almost a 0% chance of hitting anything, though it is still possible.

Read the Turret Tracking Guide in the Player Guide, it's a great read. Put you autocannon stats in there, and check it against a 40m signature with a transversal equal to your top non-AB speed. That range is going to be the most damage output for your guns. If you're target is counter-orbitting or moving at all you will actually end up farther away than your default orbit range, but his increased speed pushes your optimal range farther back anyway, so it will still keep you pretty close to your best gun range.

If you don't need to avoid incoming fire badly, then use Keep At Range instead of orbit, and set the range to your Optimal Range. When you have very low tranversal velocity (sideways motion between you and target) like chasing someone or head-on, your guns will be very effective out to Optimal Range, and still pretty effective from Optimal + 1/2 Falloff. Anyway, the max range you should really fire your autocannons is Optimal + Falloff range; at this range, with no transversal velocity, you have a 50/50 chance to hit. It plummets from this range out to Optimal + (Falloff * 2).

Use afterburners to get into range, but turn them off once your there, to cut down your transversal. But if you get in trouble, pop those burners on and orbit your target at a range that lets you keep top speed. You are very hard to hit moving that fast, and it can buy you some time vs turrets that are tearing you up.